{Reference Type}: Journal Article
{Title}: Historical microbiology: researching past bioevents by integrating scholarship (re)sources with paleomicrobiology assets.
{Author}: Kambouris ME;Patrinos GP;Velegraki A;Manoussopoulos Y;
{Journal}: Future Microbiol
{Volume}: 18
{Issue}: 0
{Year}: 2023 07 16
{Factor}: 3.553
{DOI}: 10.2217/fmb-2023-0031
{Abstract}: The analysis of past epidemics and pandemics, either spontaneous or of human origin, may revise the physical history of microbiota and create a temporal context in our understanding regarding pathogen attributes like virulence, evolution, transmission and disease dynamics. The data of high-tech scientific methods seem reliable, but their interpretation may still be biased when tackling events of the distant past. Such endeavors should be adjusted to other cognitive resources including historical accounts reporting the events of interest and references in alien medical cultures and terminologies; the latter may contextualize them differently from current practices. Thus 'historical microbiology' emerges. Validating such resources requires utmost care, as these may be susceptible to different biases regarding the interpretation of facts and phenomena; biases partly due to methodological limitations.<BR>Bacteria and viruses have always impacted humankind. They do this directly by causing illness or indirectly by destroying crops and threatening livestock. We can learn a lot by studying disease events of the past – for example, we can see how bacteria and viruses have changed over time and predict how they might change in the future. This knowledge could be important to understanding present disease events and predicting future ones. In this review, we propose the concept of 'historical microbiology’, which encourages collaboration between scientists, doctors, historians and linguists to provide historical, linguistic and cultural context to our scientific understanding of diseases of the past.